Enforcing Social Distancing and Non-Essential Business Closures

As the country slowly starts to reopen, making sure you enforce non-essential businesses that are attempting to operate earlier than allowed or essential businesses that are open who are not following social distancing protocols is important. For those agencies who are proactively visiting businesses before allowing them to open up their doors, code enforcement software can be used to document these visits.

Log that the business has been informed that when they re-open, they will only be allowed a certain percentage of occupancy at a time.

They can also confirm if lines have been added on the floor for people to follow social distancing guidelines when they stand in line.

Documenting these visits allows the agency to keep track of who has been visited and provides evidence that a business has been properly informed of these guidelines.

Enforcing both social distancing and non-essential business closures can be done most effectively with a team effort from your community. Use your citizen engagement web portal (311) to empower citizens to report business activity they see going on in the community that is still restricted.

Through Comcate’s portal, citizens can report a business being open even though they are non-essential.

They can also report when they see essential businesses not enforcing social distancing measures.

Once these requests are received, the following best practices can provide an effective and efficient follow-up:

A city staff member reviews the request and then transfers it into a code enforcement case in Comcate.

An officer is assigned and can review in the system when the business was previously visited before reopening to explain the guidelines. He is then dispatched to the business to perform a visual inspection where the following steps can be taken based on local government protocol:

Give a verbal warning to the business owner to comply.

Comcate is updated by the officer with a date/time the inspection took place, any notes from the officer about his/her interaction with the business owner, and what he/she saw while on site.

If the issue comes up again with the same business, the officer can escalate the case and issue a written notice to the owner. That notice can be created as a template in Comcate.

If the issue still persists, the officer can issue a fine and include it on a criminal or admin citation. The fine can be added and tracked in the code enforcement software.

The workflow continues on this way until there is compliance by the business.

While states differ on how stern they can be on enforcing these violations, Comcate’s software is flexible to accommodate whatever level of escalation is necessary.

Learn more on how Comcate’s software can help your code enforcement officers during this pandemic.